Michigan coach John Beilein gestures to his team earlier during a Big Ten loss at Iowa earlier this season. / Charlie Neibergall/AP

Written by

Mark Snyder

The Detroit Free Press

ANN ARBOR, MICH. — The atmosphere at Value City Arena for Michigan’s win Tuesday against Ohio State was a mix of positive and negative for Wolverines coach John Beilein.

On the positive side, he was impressed with the crowd.

“I will give Ohio (State) a lot of credit, at the start of that game, it felt like Michigan State, it felt like Duke, it felt like Iowa State, the beginning of that game they were pumped up in that place,” he said on his radio show Wednesday. “It wasn’t as loud at the end.”

That was what he saw.

What he didn’t see bothered him more.

The pregame video that showed Michigan’s basketball lowlights — the Evan Turner shot from the Big Ten Tournament that beat the Wolverines, Chris Webber’s timeout, an old-school game where the Buckeyes ran down for a game-winning open court finish against Michigan — and ended showing Michigan fans and the slogan “Pure Michigan” rattled him.

He said he didn’t find out about it until after the game because the Wolverines were in the locker room at the time. But it was brought up to him on the show.

“I didn’t know that until the end, but I hope Michigan never does that,” he said. “I don’t ever want to do things like that. There’s a lot of great things in this rivalry. That’s not one of them. We’re not going to do that as long as I’m here.”

The Michigan-Ohio State battle continues to go back and forth and some of the fans comments were particularly nasty during the game, the only meeting of the regular season.

But Beilein sticks to his approach that he won’t publicly pick Michigan State or Ohio State as the more important rivalry.

“There’s so many teams, it’s different in basketball, you play each other two, three, maybe four times,” he said. “They’re all high level games. To pick one over the other, it’s hard to say. But they all mean a lot.

“The fact is Michigan State and Ohio State are always really good. So that’s really important when you can beat them. So it means a lot when you can beat them.

“Those two games really have a lot of significance to your success that season. Not because you beat them or they beat you, but the championships is going through those teams an awful. You want to be successful at Michigan, it’s championships. To get championships, you’ve got to beat those two teams.”